DESCRIPTION: Alcoholism is a major public health problem in the United States, resulting in the annual death of tens of thousands of Americans and costing billions of dollars. The development of animal models of alcoholism will play an important role in understanding the biological factors that contribute to the development of alcoholism and provide a means of testing novel medications for its treatment. To date, the vast majority of animal studies utilize the oral route of ethanol self-administration. The factors controlling the oral self-administration of ethanol by laboratory animals, however, have not been clearly identified and controlled for. The specific aim of the proposed research is to combine the techniques of oral, intravenous, and intragastric ethanol self-administration in such a manner as to dissociate the respective contribution to the overall reinforcing value of ethanol made by taste, route of administration, and the rate at which it is absorbed into the bloodstream. With the development of these novel techniques, it will be possible to accurately characterize individual differences in an animal?s propensity to self-administer ethanol for its pharmacological, rather than gustatory, properties. These data will subsequently be used as a basis for future studies of the neuroanatomical correlates of excessive ethanol intake.